The Demon of the Cave
by TakisAngel
Summary: Tshering (Tibet) is someone many would call a strange boy. He never played with the other children, choosing instead to pray in the old temple and play with his odd necklace. The villagers speak of the time of the two snow leopards leopards as proof that he is special. This is the tale of that night. Oneshot, Demon AU


Tshering was one many would call a strange boy. He didn't fight, he didn't run and play with the other kids, he didn't even know how to throw rocks. Instead of taking part of the huge festivals and being surrounded by friends and family, he spent all his time in the temple. If you asked the villagers why this orphan did such a thing, they would shrug and say that, well, that Tshering was an odd one. Whenever you look at him, they said, you feel, off, somehow. Like the boy is staring at your soul. Don't you remember the time of tigers, they would ask, and when you said no, of course not, they'd scoff and tell you the tale. It goes like this, they said.

One day in the village, when the moon was as round as a opened flower petal and the star light rained down on the village, two snow leopards came out of the night and grabbed two children, carrying them off into the woods. The mothers and fathers wailed and cried, but none would go out to retrieve them. How would you ever find two snow leopards in the mountains? The village was torn with grief, until they heard that the little boy monk Tshering was gone. They had been searching in terror for the small boy, to find him before it was too late and he had vanished into the night like the other children, they explained, when one villager found the boy near the temple with the two lost children in hand. But that's not even the strangest part, they would rush, because the two snow leopards were there, sitting right next to him! Oh, and the boy wasn't scared, oh no, he was petting them, and the children along with him! The snow leopards left of course, but the monks say they're still around somewhere, watching from the shadows with their dark golden eyes. The children are safe, they would assure when you asked about them hurriedly, but the boy...the boy was still odd, always playing with that blue necklace of his. Still almost extraterrestrial. Surely he is not human, but some sort of spirit, they would declare, and the villagers around you would nod in agreement. And that's why he spends all his time in the temple, said the villagers, and going back to their day to day tasks.

But in truth, that was not the real reason that lonely boy spent all his time in the humble temple of his village, helping the old monks who lived there and praying from dawn to dusk. If you had asked him, which you should have done in the first place, he scolded, it was because he liked the temple, simple as that. He loved the way the candles whispered and the spirits of the world danced in their smoke. He loved the way the world slowed as he brushed the cold barren ground of the worshiping place, sweeping the dust into a million constellations that framed the roof like a great night sky. He spent his time there because that temple was his home, as simple as that, he'd say. Besides, where else would he go? He lived with old monks, and it's not like he had a family to go back too. He had to help with a million chores, and had no time to play. The monks let him go to the festivals, sure, but who would he go with and what would he do? No, he liked it in the temple much better. The villagers romanticized too much, I'm an ordinary boy, he would snort, before leaving to help the monks as he always does. But what about the leopards, you would ask quietly, and Tshering would freeze in place. That story is hard to explain, he would sigh, fiddling his strange necklace before dismissing your comment and going back to work.

Because the real story of the two leopards is hard to explain. It's filled with tales of magic and demons, of powers and mysteries long lost to humankind. It is a tale that Tshering himself hardly believed true. But, if you truly wanted to know what happened, you have to go back, back to the age of the gods, back to wars and empires no one remembers. Back to when a demon was banished to the mortal realm, oh so long ago. It goes like this….

Munkhbat was bored. Mind boggling, heart stoppingly bored. He had been stuck in a rock on a mountain for millennia, hidden inside a tiny enclave in a cavern wall with words of a language no living person knows faded into obscurity. There Munkhbat had sat for, so, so, so long. He wanted out. He wanted freedom. He wanted to feast on the living flesh of mortals and tear them apart bit by bit, and see their lives drain from their eyes as they prayed to a god that didn't exist before seeping into the black darkness of the underworld. But most off all, he wanted to sleep. The curse those stupid gods had put on him to lock him away forever always had a thorn poking him in the side, and he couldn't move or shift without blasting pain coming from every corner. By the spirits above, he swore, the moment he got out of his prison, he would take a good long nap. And then do the whole feasting and killing stuff.

As the demon pondered his boredness, he felt the presence, of, well, something, come into the cavern. _That's weird,_ he thought _._ Even animals fled from the cave when they sensed his aura. So it must either be a dumb animal, or something that can't see auras. He continued thinking of the conundrum before his entire world shifted, and he felt himself slam into the ground, the thorn digging even deeper into side with a in a voice no one could hear, he battered the walls of his prison with magic, the equivalent of knocking on the door and saying _what's going on out there?!_

Then Munkhbat felt something different. He felt the foundations of the prison crumble and his magic explode under the weight of the shattered spell. All at once he burst out of his cage for the first time in centuries, no, millennia! He whipped around in his demon form, looking for the source of the destruction.

There. A boy. A simple boy was cowering in a corner and screaming "Don't hurt me!" over and over. This was the being stupid enough to let out a demon condemon by the gods themselves?!

"YOU! WAS IST THY NAME?!" he roared

"DON'T HURT ME DON'T HURT ME DON'T-"

"VERY WELL THEN 'DON'T HURT ME' I WILL DO ONE WISH OF THY COMMAND FOR LETTING ME OUT OF MY PRISON!" He was a genius. Now he could test out his magic now that he was out, and fulfill his life debt at the same time!

"P-prison?"

"YES, THE PRISON FORGED BY THE GODS THEMSELVES. NOW, WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"

"Please don't hurt me!"

"I KNOW THY NAME!"

"No seriously, don't hurt me!"

"WHAT DOES THOU WANT YOU STUPID BOY?!"

Don't Hurt Me, what an odd name, began crying and sobbing for something called a "monk" which he assumed was the closest thing he was getting to an answer from this weirdly bald boy.

"THOU WANTS A 'MONK'?"

"NO! I mean, leave them out of it!" Okay, this was going nowhere. He had to fulfill his life debt now or he'll never get to leave. Munkhbat decided perhaps he should approach the sobbing boy (he thought it was a boy, it was hard to tell with mortals) with something more delicate like. He shredded his demon form, switching instead to slip inside his human suit, which was still worse for wear at the moment, covered with scars, several missing organs from his fight with the Dragon Yao a couple million years ago. Not to mention he was still bleeding from his eyes by that sneak attack from Yao's husband, which involved scrapping out his eyes with eagle talons and pecking his bones to oblivion. He hated to pair sometime, that dragon and demon eagle were too good of a team. But now that I'm free, he cackled gleefully, I have all the time in the world to plot my revenge against that stupid lizard and pigeon. But first he had to solve this problem. He couldn't have a loose life debt hanging around!

"Hey boy." Sniffling, the bald child looked at Munkhbat's human form with scars all over his face and blood dripping from weird angles, and started cowering again. "BOY! I command you to stop crying!" The boy then stopped abruptly, looking up in terror. "I can't kill you. I owe you a life debt, so killing you would be a demon taboo. So just ask me what you want, and I'll go on my way." And take a nap, he added mentally, eyelids already dropping.

"Y-you won't hurt me?" the boy whispered in disbelief, looking up at him with new eyes.

"For the last time, YES!" After that, the boy lost his fear like it was a pet snake and started battering Munkhbat with questions so fast, he could hardly keep up.

"Who are you?"

"A demon."

"Where are you from?"

"The demon realm-"

"Why were you in that rock?"

"Because a bird and a lizard put me there-"

"Who?"

"A bastard dragon named Yao-"

"What's the bird's name?"

"Alfred and-"

"What did you do to get locked up?"

"ARGH! One at a time!"

"Was it stupid?"

"And this is why I hate children," Munkhbat muttered as the boy started jumping up and down and demanding answers like it was free candy. He started to miss his cowering.

"Don't Hurt Me, calm down and let me speak!"

"My name isn't Don't Hurt Me, it's Tshering."

"Alright Tshering, what do you want," Munkhbat sighed, feeling sighed as sleep grabbed hold of his eye lids and demanded to rest for _just_ one day.

"Oh, I need to find someone!" Tshering cried,as if suddenly remembering something super important. "Two kids, a couple of snow leopards took them away. That's why I'm in this cave!"

"You thought that a pair of dangerous of man eating beast were in a dark cavern and you walked in."

"Um-"

"Do I even need to point out the flaws in that plan?"

"Can you help me find them?"

"Is that your final wish?"

"Y-yes. Yes. Definitely. I need to find them. Their parents are so worried."

"You're sure? This is the one moment in your life you will ever have a chance to get anything. Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Yes," he replied confidently, eyes blazing and standing even with Munkhbat. This boy was willing to choose the fate of others over himself. That was so, what was the word he was looking for? Oh, right.

Stupid.

"Very well, where are they?" He brushed the dry blood off his pants and started to walk out of the cave, feet jumping at the chance to be used once more.

"Um, I don't really know."

"Okay, what are their names then?"

"Heh, uh, funny story."

"You don't know their names do you?"

"Not really no."

This was going to be harder than he thought. Without the names for the wind to whisper back to him, how was he supposed to find to mortals in this frozen wasteland? Screw it, he was going into eagle mode.

"Boy, hold onto my arm."

"Wait what-" Tshering didn't even get to finish his thought before Munkhbat ripped off his human form and became a large bird like creature, with room enough for a person to easily sit on its back. The boy was thrown onto the demon, and then they were off into the frigid clear air.

Tshering clutched on tightly to the demon's loose feathers as they zoomed across the sky, circling around the mountainous area two, three, four times before the demon came to a crashing halt and started to dive. Wind whipped past, winding and whirling around and around, screaming into his ears and pulling him down, down, DOWN.

Then it was over, and the disturbed snow drifted back onto the ground on which they landed. Panting, Tshering threw himself off the giant bird, falling to the ground and thanking whatever gods were left that he was still alive.

"Your captives are that way." Munkhbat pointed towards a small cave that yawned open before becoming a dark pit in the ground, with strange sounds crawling their way out. "Don't worry, they're still alive, the snow leopards haven't eaten them yet."

Tshering watched in a strange sort of awe as the demon he was so scared of before swaggered into the cave, saying some foreign sounding words into the dark pit, and then jogging out in mild concern.

"You might want to duck." Just as those word left his mouth the two leopards bolted out of the cave like a bat out of hell, dashing into the trees and running away under the cover of the mountainous forest. Two very determined looking rocks followed after them, magically shooting themselves through the air and into the forest, and a meow of terror cracked through the air.

"Magic rocks. Works every time. Oh look, the kids are coming out." Two small toddlers waddled out of the cave, pale as the snow around them. Seeing Tshering they ran to him and started crying, like, well, babies.

"Welp. That's it. I'm going to go now." The demon turned to leave before a pair of arms wrapped around Munkhbat, and a voice whispered:

"Thank you." Munkhbat froze. Thank you. He never heard those words. It was always " _I'll get you for this!"_ Or " _you will pay you monster,"_ or more commonly " _stop stabbing me!"_ Never "thank you." His mind went blank. What was happening. He was a demon. He killed millions. Why was this boy thanking him?

"Oh, and can you get us back home?" That broke Munkhbat out of his daze, wordlessly nodding and turning into a monstrous bird once more.

The three soared past the high mountains and the dark forest, swooshing between boulders and trees so old you could count the years it survived by the number of leaves it bore, with the green sea turning to mush beneath them. Finally, after a couple of direction changes to tell the demon where the village actually was, he swooped into the outliers of the village, wings drooping with exhaustion a millennia old.

Tshering thank the demon again as they climbed off (how strange those words still were), and the two children started tumbling towards the village on the worn out road they knew so well. Tshering stayed behind, awkwardly standing besides the monster of a bird, before turning to face the demon once more.

"You know, I don't even know your name."

"It's Munkhbat, in case you need to know. Now, shouldn't you be leaving? I have a lizard to kill and the world's longest nap to take."

"Hey Munkhbat?"

"What is it now?"

"What if I need your help again?" Tshering asked meekly, looking down at the ground and fiddling with his fingers.

"Hopefully you never will. Now scram kid."

"But what if I do?"

"By the spirits above- if you think you're in that much danger, here." The demon flipped back into a human form and gave a strange call out into the creeping forest. Two snow leopards burst out, almost sobbing in fear, with the rocks zooming happily behind them. With a switch of his hand, the rocks plunked onto the ground. Tshering watched in awe once more as Munkhbat spoke to the leopards in a whispering demon tongue, and their piercing blue eyes swirled into a dark gold. The leopards then walked up to Tshering and began snuggling him like kitten, mewling with jaws the size of the boy's face and kneading his legs with deadly sharp paws.

"I made a deal with the leopards, and now they will protect you to the end of your days in exchange for eternal life in the High Realm. You should probably name that one Fluffy." Tshering gave a grin and started to hug the man slaughtering beast like it was a new puppy.

"Thank you!" He suddenly stopped and whipped around to see Munkhabt's human form slinking away.

"Wait!"

"What NOW?!"

Don't leave!"

"And why in the name of the Great Dragon's colorful furry MITTENS should I do that?"

"Because I want you to stay!" Tshering blurted out. Munkhbat turned as white as the snow capped mountains behind him.

"What?"

"Please. Just for a while. I don't know many people and I want you to- I want you to stay. Please. Just for a bit," whispered the young monk, head bowed and voice wavering

The demon went even paler before turning away from Tshering. Several deafening heartbeats later he turned back to face the boy, face back to normal and moving just a bit too awkwardly. The monster sighed, and picked up a rock from the ground, turning it over and over in his hands until it was a glorious heaven blue. He then picked up a twig from the ground and smoothed it until it was a shiny silver string, which looped around the heavenly rock until a necklace that radiated around the area shone back at Tshering.

"Here. Take this. Whenever you want to call me, simply break the necklace." With that, the demon was gone, leaving a single midnight feather in his wake, before the earth below let go of its breath and the world moved the way it had done before, free from the demon's presence.

Tshering picked up the necklace from the ground and the feather from the ground, and walked back to his village, occasionally turning back to the place the bird had landed, waiting to see if Munkhbat would be waiting for him there when he turned around.

He never was.


End file.
